


The Widower's Tale

by De Orakle (Delphi)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Backstory, Death Rituals, Drama, Established Relationship, Interspecies, M/M, Other, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-14
Updated: 2002-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/De%20Orakle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The strange business of spiders, in verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Widower's Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Snape Fuh-Q Fest First Wave. Tricky Pairing #52: _Snape/Aragog_. The scholar's song is a variation on the ballad "The Demon Lover."

"My dear, how I wished that you might visit me this night,   
here in my parlour.   
There are such sights you show my blind old eyes,   
and there is a feast to be held."

My Chosen turns from me, and yes, I feel him shiver.   
My dear children click with excitement.

"How does our Godfather Hagrid?" a sharp voice cuts in,   
balancing on the outermost silk of the parlour.   
A young one,   
the memory of hair the soft grey of blindness,   
smelling of good meat underneath her skeleton.   
Her voice curves, smiling crooked and eager:   
"And will you tell us a story before the feast?"

"Madam, I am no storyteller," my Chosen demurs,   
"Though your godfather fares well. His newest love   
is a manner of carnivorous rabbit—   
though he has forgotten you not."   
He speaks with a dangerous sweetness. He distrusts the hunger   
of these young ones.   
And he asks:   
"Perhaps you will favour us, Madam?"

I bow to her direction,   
and the silk trembles beneath me   
as she stands.   
She speaks:

"A girl from a faraway land, a human girl, was taken with a conjurer.   
And when the egg was laid in her belly,   
swollen full and ripe,   
she went to him and wept desperate tears of love. He bowed to her,   
stroked her back,   
swore that they would marry, that they would run in the night,   
together,   
to a web of stone, to a castle of their own.   
She believed him;   
even though she had seen the glances in the hall   
he gave to her younger sister,   
who was the fairer, as humans reckon these things,   
she believed.   
Or she believed that she believed.

"Yet there was something cold about the conjurer's eyes,   
his smile so sharp and thin, his hair like blood. Something that   
brought her early to their trysting place,   
and not alone.   
She brought with her, Mosag   
—lovely and wise Mosag   
who guarded treasure in the deep dark of the lord's castle   
where the girl was servant—   
her secret friend.   
Mosag who had no children yet of her own   
and so loved the human girl as such.   
With Mosag, the girl hid in the brush and waited.   
Hid in the brush and cradled the egg in her belly.

"Her love arrived after sunset, cloaked only in twilight   
and not in his travelling clothes.   
He carried a bag   
from which he took a shovel and a wand.   
And he hitched the shovel at his shoulder   
and set to with a will   
beside the brush where his lover hid with Mosag   
beneath a haunted elm.   
The scholar sang as he worked, as he dug her grave,   
that old song—   
Shall I sing it for you now, my brothers and sisters?"

The young one pauses, and as a one we click our pincers   
—or almost as a one:   
My Chosen, his skin so bare, his flesh so vulnerable,   
his voice so soft,   
he claps his hands together.

The young one (Which one is she? A daughter of my son, Magog, perhaps?)   
sings:

"I might have had a noble lady,   
Far, far beyond the sea;   
—click   
I might have had a noble lady,   
Were it no' for the love o' thee.   
—click   
O false are the vows o' womankind,   
but fair is their false bodie:   
—click   
I would never have trodden on this here ground   
Were it no' for the love o' thee.   
—click"

Her voice is fine and low, but the voice of my Chosen is finer.

"And when he'd dug her grave—   
A deep hole it was, for she was a tall girl   
and big with young—   
he walked unknowing right beside her, back and a-forth,   
rehearsing his lies, thus:   
Well, good evening, my darling, my dear,   
my love.   
My, but you blind me in the moon's light,   
mother of my unborn babe. Come, let me hold you.   
And he'd embrace the empty air with one hand,   
and with the other, hiding his wand in his sleeve,   
he'd swish it through the dark,   
and where it pointed,   
the grass and shrub and tree withered and died.

"The girl trembled in the brush with fright,   
and Mosag trembled too,   
with righteous anger.   
And once the scholar looked up and said,   
An owl, I'll wager—and another time, What is that sound   
in the dark?   
And the third time, he said nothing at all,   
for Mosag then emerged from her hiding-place,   
and his wand fell to the ground.

"The girl returned home much later,   
and neither she nor Mosag had been missed.   
There was silk in the girl's hair,   
and blood on her face,   
and her wits had half left her,   
and she sang:

Hush-a-bye   
My babe, my dear   
A cradle your Auntie   
Has built you here.

With string and sugar   
Lace and silk   
She'll give you meat,   
I'll give you milk.

"And it is said that her babe, when it was born,   
took after neither sire nor dame,   
with his black hair   
and black eyes   
and clever limbs.   
Love was the sculptress, Mosag the midwife claimed."

And the young one bows down, to general applause.   
A smile twitches, hides about her lips: I know it's there,   
it waits in her black eyes. She stares at me, amused.

My Beloved flushes, jealous and hungry.   
There is no sun to the heat of his body.

"How fares the web?" I lift my eyes to the shining mystery   
I can no longer see,   
and my voice is old to my hearing,   
I fear that this is not the first time I have asked.   
"How fares the web where Mosag now weaves?"

To my ears there is a sound,   
such as a hundred eyes turning upwards to the Great Orb after mine,   
to the shining light that denies me its beauty.

And there is no reply save silence,   
and the touch of my Beloved.   
His hand—   
turned inside out, with bones buried beneath flesh   
—against my belly.   
His touch is cold.

In my mind, I see him then.   
My wife's pale spider-child; the smile has reached his lips,   
his feet so graceful as he steps the dance of love.   
My children, amused beyond all bearing,   
and hungry,   
advance.   
I see the red mark that burns on his arm,   
burns with a hunger of its own.

I have chosen well.   
I have chosen true.

The feast begins.   
Perhaps my blind eyes weep.


End file.
